If you’re anything like me and you didn’t play tennis growing up outside of the occasional gym class, it can be something that is a bit interesting and scary at the same time. It’s such a fast paced and technical game that some people just don’t ever get into it.

That’s a shame, because once you warm up to it, tennis is actually a really fun time. For the new player, I would recommend working on racquet technique and skill, and getting down the short explosive sprints needed to get across the court quickly.

Racquet work and technique can be improved by playing against a wall or with someone patient who is willing to allow different attempts and experiments. The sprints are something that simply have to be applied and done, so that the body can adapt to the physical toll that is taken.

Anyway, with a bit of practice and a lengthy warm up period, even the people that haven’t ever really played tennis can get into the swing of the game and have an enjoyable time. As long as you’re moving around and able to make an honest effort out of the whole thing while playing with understanding friends, the sport is one that is pretty enjoyable.

Unlike most mid-life autobiographies, “Open” is not supposed to be a list of awards and display of accreditation. With Pulitzer Prize winner J.R. Moehringer as his co-writer, Agassi lays his intimate secrets (some of them past lies) for all to examine.

In addition to addressing the unfortunate mullet Mohawk toupee he sported in the early part of his professional tennis career (a hairpiece that once came apart in the shower before the French Open and had to be reconstructed using bobby pins), Agassi discusses his tennis beginnings and a stint with crystal meth in 1997.

His father, a former Olymic Boxer, insisted even from early childhood that Agassi pursue a militant tennis career. The son hated tennis and his father for most of the brilliant career that did follow.

One of only six men to have won all four Grand Slam events– Wimbledon, the French Open, US Open and Australian Open– and former husband to Brooke Shields, Agassi has since married female tennis star, Steffi Graf, and retired in 2006 from tennis.

Confession is better late than never, but perhaps not lying to the  in the first place about his crystal meth use would have been the better option. Instead, his year-long recreational drug use was called ignorant and blamed on a former assistant, “Slim.” The three month probation that followed probably would have been better than nine years of guilt for lying to the ATP.

All in all, “Open” presents a very straightforward and honest view of Andre Agassi, the guy under the Mohawk hairpiece that turned out to have some serious talent.

Yersterday, in a match with Kim Clijsters, there was a controversial call made by one of the line judges, that sent Serena into one of the most childish tantrums ever seen in the game of tennis. Not only did she use profanities obsessively, but she also lost the match because of it. The female line judge felt like Serena had threatened her life after Serena told her she would shove a tennis ball up her a**. Needless to say, Serena, you may have just summed up your career in one pathetic rage. Enjoy being known from now on as the big, black, tennis bully.